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Saturday, October 11, 2014

In my mind, there are two main directors who have heavily influenced my generation, Generation X- Christopher Nolan and David Fincher. Nolan got a late start and didn't hit his stride until the mid-2000's, when we were in college and beyond, as it was David Fincher that affected us early on. He freaked us out early with Se7en as we asked ourselves what was in the box and it was Fight Club a few years later that filmed just exactly what a "generation of men raised by women" felt like. After Fight Club in 1999, Fincher entertained us (Panic Room), challenged our notion of storytelling (Zodiac), and pandered to the elderly / artsy-fartsy (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). But once Nolan solidified his prime and made the case that he's Gen X's one-true director, Fincher released The Social Network and sucked us right back in. A story like The Social Network shouldn't have worked. It was a gimmick concept (the story of Facebook) being told over two different depositions. Yet David Fincher managed to make it work. In ten years, we will all be asking ourselves how The Social Network lost to The King's Speech at the Oscars the same way we ask ourselves how Goodfellas lost to Dances With Wolves. We will cry out what a shame it is that Fincher never won Best Director at the Academy Awards the same way we all did with Martin Scorsese before 2005.

However, the release of 2014's Gone Girl proves that Christopher Nolan will always have a leg up on Fincher. Nolan's Interstellar gets released later this year, and that could completely change mine and my generation's perception on him, but Nolan's stretch run of Memento, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, and Inception is a run that might never be broken. Fincher has had the same highs as Nolan and Fincher's floor is higher than Nolan (Fincher has never made a movie as "bad" as Insomnia or The Dark Knight Rises), but I'm very doubtful that Fincher will ever have the same consistency that Nolan has. To David Fincher's credit, his films are always interesting and watchable. Gone Girl falls along those lines- interesting and enjoyable, yet it's not even close to becoming an instant classic.

NOTE: FROM HERE ON OUT WILL BE A SPOILER FILLED VERSION OF GONE GIRL. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET, GO OUT AND WATCH IT AND COME BACK TO ME. I'LL BE WAITING

Thursday, October 2, 2014

While the extra wild card makes the regular season more fun and intriguing, it makes that first wild card play off a bitch to predict, and I won't do it. Anything can happen in one game; it's so random. The cream tends to rise to the top in a five game and seven game series; however, that doesn't tend to happen in a one game series. So you're damn right I'm doing my predictions after the results of the Wild Card Round.